Facing off against the ritualist and her monstrous companion, I came to a conclusion. I would probably be dragging myself away from this fight by my little finger. It was bad enough fighting one top tierless creature, let alone three. The treant had yet to break through the wall. It was only a matter of time, though.

  The half-human void standing in front of me was in a constant state of dispersing, but never lost any mass. It had an indistinct shape, which made it harder than usual to identify. But I managed.

  Lesser Shadow of Mortal Madness(Lvl 9)

  The Shadows are an elusive group of eldritch creatures. Known for their haunting presence and terrifying powers, they are one of a hundred different nightmarish stories mothers tell their children to make them fall in line. This is a lesser Shadow of Mortal Madness, meaning it is less powerful than most others, madness being one of the minor Shadows and it being mortal rather than divine. Not much is known about the Shadows as a general rule. All Madness is known for is its slightly hypnotic gaze. This is the physical incarnation of the Moonkissed Ritualist’s madness.

  Hoo boy. This was going to be bad.

  I decided to just charge. There was no point in waiting for them to come to me. That would only leave Dalia time to complete a ritual. And I did not want to be on the wrong end of one of those.

  My feet pounded through the rubble of the sundered house, kicking up little puffs of ash. That was odd in itself, as ash shouldn’t have had time to form yet. But I put that thought out of my mind and focused fully on the task before me. Killing, or at the very least delaying, these creatures.

  Bracing myself for impact, I hunched behind my shield as I bore down on the Shadow of Madness. I squeezed my eyes shut, tensing the muscles in my shoulders and back for the hard crunch of the shield meeting flesh.

  And stumbled right on through, nearly toppling onto my face.

  Hold on a second, wasn’t this the physical representation of Dalia’s madness? Shouldn’t I have been able to hit it? I looked back to see the ethereal body of the Shadow reconstituting itself from a seemingly gaseous state.

  Figures. The thing was a shadow, after all. It was only fitting for it to be incorporeal. Shadows were the absence of a thing, after all. The form an object left behind in its wake as it was revealed to the light. It would be only natural for the shadow of a spiritual object to have an immaterial presence.

  The problem was, how did I deal with it? Fire? That was the traditional way for these kinds of things, but unlikely. Maybe a strong wind? Traditionally less effective, but probably better in this situation. Still unlikely. A strong light? Probably not.

  I nearly smacked myself when I realized I was ignoring the most important part of the description. This was Dalia’s madness given form. If I dealt with her, the madness would go away on its own. At least, that’s what I hoped. If it didn’t, well, I would burn that bridge if I got there.

  In the meantime, however, I needed to get to the ritualist. She was the key to all of this. Taking her out would put an end to this whole ordeal.

  Turning, I took a first few steps towards her. I was really starting to notice the world warping, now that I was within about fifteen feet. Things around me stretched into the indefinite distance, twisting around each other in patterns I couldn’t discern. It was dizzying, kind of like a fractal you could see layered on top of the world around you.

  My next few steps were halting as I struggled to keep my balance, only to feel a cold presence wrap itself around me, chilling me to the bone. A black face rotated unnaturally into my field of vision, locking those hollow, white eyes onto my own. They were twisting even further than the rest of reality, infinite depths leading to infinite more leading to patterns so jarring it broke something in my mind.

  You have been inflicted with Madness.

  Madness - 10:00

  It was beautiful, that gaze. Wonderfully deep and enticing, like I could jump in and keep falling for all of eternity. The meaning it held was unparalleled.

  Shadow. Wonderful shadow. Deep as the ever-growing emptiness of space, black as the deepest depths of the ocean. Cold as the wind on the highest mountain peak.

  Silver light the softest I had ever seen. Blurring together with the light of the moon it filled me with the deepest, most wonderful warmth I had ever felt.

  The moon. Somewhere beyond the horrid trees watched the moon. It was my friend, the only friend I had ever had. The only one who had never truly left me. It smiled, she smiled upon me like a gentle mother did her only son. She was proud of me. She bid me welcome. I needed only give in to her will and all would be well.

  Warmth flooded me. It was overwhelming, the sweetest sensation I had ever felt. All this would be mind if I gave my friend what she needed. Myself. The best exchange of my life.

  Some part of me screamed that this wasn’t right. I was supposed to be doing something. Something important. But what could be more important than my only friend the moon. Her touch was the only thing I could ever need. Her will the only thing I could ever do.

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  I let myself float away on that feeling of warmth. This was what life was, this sweet sensation of ecstasy and joy. Words blinked in my vision, but I barely took the time to read them. I was too… I was… I…

  You have been cursed with moonsickness.

  You have been cursed with Tears of the Night.

  You are now Moonstruck.

  Madness becomes permanent.

  Rage. Hate. Chaos. Pain. Darkness. Light. Confusion.

  Rage. Hate. Chaos. Pain. Darkness. Light. Confusion.

  RAGE.

  The body was consumed by rage. Something, no, someone had done it wrong. It needed revenge.

  It was holding something large. Useless. It flung that away. Balling its fists, it bellowed a challenge at the sky and turned in a circle, searching for something to sate it’s overflowing fury.

  Seeing a silver figure standing close to it, it decided that must be what hurt it. It hated that figure with all it had. A deep seated rage that burned hot and cold and would not go out. That figure would die. The body would kill it. It would feel the figure’s lifeblood pour through its fingers as it squeezed the thing’s heart, keeping it alive just long enough to watch as the body consumed what little life it had left. Blood. That was what the body needed. Blood. Death. Destruction. Chaos.

  It scuttled forward on all fours, like a cross between a sidewinder and a spider. Hands were so inefficient. It needed paws and claws to help tear this figure to shreds. It needed a better sense of smell so it could taste the sweet blood better. It needed better teeth so it could rip the throat from the figure.

  This would do for now, though.

  The body charged, brushing aside an oddly behaving shadow, and leaped at the figure. But instead of colliding with the warm flesh of a living being, it slammed head-first into a previously invisible barrier that flared silver at its touch.

  It stopped, silently cursing its lousy sense of smell. If it had only been able to smell the circle through the chaos it would have known.

  Railing at the circle, it found no entry, no weak points. A shadow kept trying to grab it, but it just tore through the thing, focused entirely on breaking through that circle. That was the key, it didn’t know why. That was the key to all its problems.

  Then a horrible blow slammed into it from the side, sending it careening across the ground and off a nearby building. Acting purely on instinct, it curled into a ball to protect its head and chest until the bouncing stopped. Then it uncurled and darted to the side just as another blow came down right where it had been just seconds before.

  The thing that had hit it was huge, at least half again as tall as the body. And the body felt and odd kinship with this thing. An urge to fight and maim and crush and kill until its last breath and beyond. An unholy rage felt deep in its bones that caused it to tremble with a mix of excitement and hate.

  What better use had they for claws and teeth than to fight each other until the great release?

  A kind of mutual agreement passed between the body and the tree and they both backed up, setting themselves into ready positions. At a signal from nowhere anything else would be able to see or sense, they leapt at each other.

  Now, you might be wondering why I had fallen to such a curse as moonsickness. ‘I had everything I needed with me’ you might say, ‘to resist such a curse. I had resisted the fear debuff by the charviper earlier. Why hadn’t the same come into effect?’

  The answer to that question lies in a few different directions. First off, the difference in rank. I had only been two levels below the charviper at the time, and while the very beginning levels do have a bit more of a gap than say, levels three through seven, the difference between me and the snake was not quite enough for it to give me the full debuff. Nor, in reality, was it actually that much stronger than me in the Intelligence factor.

  That leads to the second reason. Stat differences. The debuff of fear is based on the strength stat. There was a much smaller ratio between me and the snake in terms of strength, in fact, I might have even had more of it. Madness and moonsickness, on the other hand, were based on my Intelligence stat. I had an abysmal one of those, and it was by far the ritualist’s best stat. By far.

  Third, you have to factor in the divine influence. Beings that have been affected by the divine, even if it is only dungeon-born(which is more semi-divine than anything), is a lot more powerful than normal. So, if Dalia hadn’t interacted with the moon directly, I would have had a lot easier of a time resisting the curses.

  And finally, it has to do with the peculiar nature of the Shadows. I will not get into that now, as it is a bit complex and would better serve a different part of this story later on down the line. For now, take this. Shadows are not exactly mortal creatures themselves. They are… other. Yes, that’s the best word to describe them. Other.

  All of these things led up to myself being unable to resist first the debuff of madness, making it exponentially harder to resist the curses that followed. And now my body was making all the decisions on an animalistic level while my soul and mind were locked away, trying desperately to take the key to their cell out of the fire before it melted in three days. Good luck to them. Moonsickness is one of the hardest curses to remove on your own, it’s almost absurd. Let’s go pay them—or, well, me—a visit.

  In a dark space in my mind, the part of me that was still me was on the verge of panic. As it turns out, killing monsters and nearly getting killed yourself by a few doesn’t quite prepare you for being trapped in your own mind by a homicidal hyper-emotional witch. Being calm about that requires experience, something I didn’t really have and never really wanted to gain.

  I was breathing rapidly, staving off a panic attack that wouldn’t have done anything as it was all in my head.

  “Calm down.” I said to myself, the image of me that was sitting in the metaphorical cell across from me. That was my soul speaking, if you didn’t know. This was all from my soul’s point of view as my mind wasn’t quite up to the task of carrying a complete thought, madness being what it was. It was getting better, though.

  When the moonsickness had struck, the madness had become more external than internal and I just had to wait out that ten minute timer, which was mostly expired by now.

  “Can’t,” I said, the mind this time, “Cause… heart attack. Make… stop.”

  “That won’t do any good,” I said in return. “We can’t affect the body in here. I can feel it. The heart attack won’t take hold. For that matter, why would you want to make our body stop fighting. We’d just immediately die. Are you still mad? I’d have thought that would have stopped by now.”

  “I… madness… the body… can’t… shouldn’t… must…. Oh that feels so much better. Those eyes really were something, I tell you.”

  “Great!” I said. “Now how do we get out of here? Our body is going to get itself killed.”